Update: We conducted the following interview with Andreas Tonelli a few weeks ago. We have now been shocked by the news that he had a fatal accident while mountain biking on Piz Duleda in the Val Gardena Dolomites. He had apparently set off alone on a tour from which he never returned. A friend went looking for him in the evening - the mountain rescue team was able to locate him and recover his body. We wish his partner and friends much strength as they grieve.
His friend and expedition partner on Cerro Mercedario, Giovanni Mattiello, wrote the following on Instagram:
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To honour Andreas Tonelli, we would like to publish the interview with him here.
The great descent from Cerro Mercedario
The riders, Andreas Tonelli and Giovanni Mattiello, both come from Italy and know high mountains very well. However, their adventure on the Cerro Mercedario (6770 metres!) in the Argentinian Andes is set to push them to their limits. This is shown in the half-hour film that the two professional mountain bikers and guides made together with Luca Putzer. The video is currently being shown in various Norrona branches shown - Andreas is a Norrona ambassador - and will soon be running on Outdoor film festivals. We spoke to Andreas about the descent from an altitude of almost 7000 metres.
BIKE: Andreas, at the Presentation of your film at Norrona in Munich you said that the film was made on a very low budget. Was the journey itself actually the goal - as they say?
Andreas Tonelli: Let's put it this way, the film was a minor matter for us. For Luca, Giovanni, Julia and me, it was primarily about an intense adventure outside. Let's put it this way: we didn't adapt the adventure to the film, we adapted the film to the adventure. We wanted to push our own boundaries. We wanted to do something that connected us and spend an intense time in a remote place.
I believe that nowadays you can only experience great, intense adventures that also lead you to yourself if you suffer and if you have to do without things. That's why we chose a destination that is remote, difficult to reach, where you have to start from very far down. Where you practically have to carry everything up yourself and melt water. Yes, and where you can also get altitude sickness.
Who did you have with you? We only really see Giovanni and you in the film.
Exactly, Giovanni Mattiello is a good friend of mine. He's only 28 years old, I'm 47, he could be my son. But we share the same vision: for us, biking is primarily an adventure. Mountain biking" consists of 2 terms, mountain and bike. For us, the focus is 60 % on the mountain, the wilderness.
Then Luca Putzer was there. Luca is the filmmaker, he's only 20 years old, so he's extremely young. But he's already been pretty successful in this field. He is a well-known drone pilot. He's travelled all over the world, has been to Iraq twice and Pakistan several times, for example, and has taken some wonderful shots. Luca was not only extremely important for the expedition professionally, but also as a person.
And then there was Julia: she's my friend and doesn't appear in the film very much because she's rather shy. She didn't really want to be in front of the camera. But she played a very important role in the success of the expedition. She supported us, she took care of all the logistics and safety on the mountain. And yes, I'm not saying it because she's my friend, but she's a wonderful person and it was nice to have her with us.
The only logistics was a so-called Arriero
And that was your entire team, so there were no other logistics or anything around it?
The only logistics involved was a farmer, a so-called arriero. These are the muleteers who help you up the mountain with their mules by transporting some of your luggage. In our case, up to the base camp, i.e. from 29 to 4200 metres.
Of course, we didn't hike up in one day because we had to acclimatise. That means we arrived on the third day and spent two nights somewhere in between.
And from then on you set off with all your luggage on your shoulders?
We couldn't take the bikes and all the luggage away at once, so we went to the next camp.
We always took the bikes from one camp up to the next camp and deposited them safely there. Sometimes it was very, very windy and we had to weigh them down with stones.
Then back to the lower camp and the next day we climbed back up to the bikes with our rucksacks and all our weight and spent the night there. And so on up to the top. This was partly due to the weight, but also a strategy to slowly acclimatise the body to the altitude.
Was the height the biggest challenge or were there other technical or organisational hurdles?
There were several factors, first and foremost certainly the altitude. At 6000 metres, the oxygen density in the air is half as high as at sea level. That makes it really, really exhausting. And you always have to be careful not to overexert yourself, because altitude sickness usually follows. In that case, 90% of the time you have to abort the expedition.
Secondly, the weather. We are in an extremely remote area, known for the strong winds and heavy thunderstorms - and also the very low temperatures. Safety plays an extremely important role. There is no helicopter, no mountain rescue - nothing - and you really have to be careful.
At altitude, the tyre pressure increases from 1.5 to 3 bar
How was it with your bike? I imagine that defects on the bike would be difficult in that area. You have a Last Cinto. How did you equip it and prepare it for the expedition?
I knew that it was less about speed at this altitude. That's why I favoured an all-mountain bike, and we put it together in such a way that it was as light as possible without having to sacrifice anything. The bike weighs 13 kilos.
For example, I ride the new Trickstuff Piccola. It was extremely important for me to have titanium brake levers that I could trust. Carbon levers would have been out of the question because the risk of crashing and breaking a brake lever is simply very, very high. Giovanni broke his brake lever in that last descent when he crashed.
I also had no problems with the brakes at altitude, for example. The last time I was at altitude was with Sram brakes and with Shimano brakes and I always had problems, because of the altitude you have to pump to build up the pressure point again.
What about the suspension? That also depends on the air pressure.
You have to constantly let out all the air at altitude because the fork and shock work completely differently at altitude. And the same happens with the tyres. I probably started with 1.5 bar at the bottom and at the summit it was around 3 bar, I guess.
Descent of almost 7000 metres: borderline, I was totally exhausted & my heart rate was 190
What is it like to ride down from almost 7000 metres? You say that the altitude alone is enough to give you a hard time.
It may not come across properly in the film, but the most strenuous part of the whole expedition, where our bodies were really pushed to their limits and sometimes beyond, was the descent. You can always stop and watch your heart rate on the way up. But on the way down, you can't just say in the middle of a steep descent: 'Right, now I'm going to get off because my heart rate is 190.
No, we went down there and I remember when I got to the highest camp, where my girlfriend and Luca were waiting for us, I really just fell over. I was totally exhausted and my heart rate was 190 - my body was really working at its limits.
In the film you only actually see one or two crashes in the snow, but you picked yourselves up again straight away. Were there no major crashes or technical failures?
The bigger crashes were fortunately on top of the snow, and the snow was fortunately soft.
Then there was Giovanni's crash at the end of the film in this gully, but that was really the very last descent of our whole trip. It was totally crazy: we just went up this mountain and there's this famous descent called El Morajon, which translates as the wall, because it's very, very steep. In the last shot of me, I'm riding down there too. Giovanni wasn't there because his front brake had broken and he had to go down on foot.
Personally, I think that's what makes your film special, because it's not so much about spectacular falls and drama, but more about the expedition and being together. In contrast to many other mountain bike films, which often focus on this "Will they survive?" moment.
Yes, the film was supposed to be a depiction of what we experienced, not just in terms of the landscape, but also within ourselves. And we tried to portray this in an authentic way, without showing off or making a spectacle of ourselves.
That's one thing I'd like to emphasise: We didn't go up there to set a record, but - as I say at the beginning of the film - to experience an adventure. I believe that in today's world, such adventures are extremely important - at least for me. Because they give me the opportunity to look inside myself.
We estimated our chances of getting up there at all at less than 50 per cent. We said that no matter how this expedition turned out, we would experience something unique. And I, well, none of us would have had a problem if we hadn't made it to the summit.
Marc Strucken
Editor
